Find Everything Okay?
by Love the Starry Night
Summary: In the midst of a routine that's become both monotonous and predictable, Sakura meets someone who encourages her to live a little more outside of her comfort zone.
1. Chapter 1

"I have to warn you that the people who come through here can be a bit weird. We get all kinds of vagrants and some of them can be…a little out there."

Sakura nodded. "Okay."

"So if you get creeped out, you've got the walkie-talkie there if you want me to come and handle a customer for you. I'd be more than happy to do it, all right?"

She nodded again. "Sure."

"Okay then, I think that's everything. Good luck!"

It was noon on a Wednesday, one of the few days that Sakura had her night job off, and also her first day as a cashier at quite possibly the smallest gas station convenience store she'd ever been to. It was unfortunately named Come and Go Convenience. There was only one bathroom, in which people had taken to writing on the wall alternative names for the store that more clearly illustrated the problematic nature of its title. (She had thought of one herself, and would have made her contribution if she wasn't now currently employed there.)

The only thing she was worried about concerning the job was the possibility of a robbery; the seven o'clock news was always showing clips of masked gunmen invading gas stations at night. She didn't know what she'd do, other than hide beneath the counter, if that happened—but in reality she wasn't _too _worried about it. She'd looked up the statistics—it didn't actually happen that often.

So it was with a little boredom that Sakura began her first tentative day of work. She qualified it as tentative because the moment she found a better day job she'd take it in a heartbeat—she was _not_ going to spend her days working in a dusty old convenience store making little more than minimum wage.

She was looking forward to watching a sappy movie and eating frozen yogurt in her tiny apartment that evening when she was done with her shift, but that was eight hours away. For now she just had a four-hundred page novel she had been meaning to reread for years as company and a whole day to kill selling candy bars to travelers coming down Highway 1, all while her manager watched _Frasier _reruns in the back.

Sakura sat reading for an hour behind the counter on a little wicker chair as cars periodically stopped at the pumps outside to fill up, wondering offhandedly if she was actually going to have to work at all, when finally someone walked in to buy something. She hurriedly stood up.

Her first customer was a middle-aged man who had two kids in tow, a boy and a girl. From her place behind the counter, she watched them peruse the aisles, the kids excitedly picking out candy bars for themselves. The man however seemed not to find what he was looking for, at which point he approached the counter—and, she realized, her.

"Hi there, you need any help?" she asked politely. The man wasn't meeting Sakura's eyes—he was staring at her pink hair, like most people did the first time they met her.

"I'm just looking for some sunscreen. I didn't see any in the personal items section, and I was hoping you could check the back…"

"Let me ask the man in charge," she replied, tuning into the walkie to get the man in question's attention. She already knew there was sunscreen in the back. She'd walked by a box of it when she'd arrived, but she didn't feel comfortable enough yet leaving the register to get it. "Hey, could you check for sunblock, please?" she asked.

His garbled reply signaled an affirmative. "I'm sure we have it," Sakura told the customer while they waited, who nodded, the expression on his face resembling the sort of lofty condescending courtesy that people seemed to save exclusively for retail workers. His kids were gawking at her hair in open curiosity. She smiled at them, and they hesitantly smiled back.

While they waited, Sakura tried to make small talk. "So where are you guys headed? The coast? It's great this time of year."

"We were just there," the customer said dismissively, signaling that he had no desire to fraternize with her.

"Why is your hair pink?" the little boy inquired. His father made a shushing noise at him, but Sakura grinned and rested her elbows on the counter.

"Your dad ever tell you to make sure you don't get bubblegum in your hair?" she asked conspiratorially. The kids nodded. "Well, my dad always told me that too, and I didn't listen! Once I was blowing a huge bubble, and it popped and covered my entire head! Since then my hair has been pink, and I can't wash it out no matter what. It's stuck."

The children burst out laughing, and even the customer chuckled, his cold veneer melting with the warmth of his son and daughter's giggles. Sakura grinned, glad that she'd successfully changed the tone of the transaction entirely.

The manager appeared, carrying the entire box of sunscreen. The customer paid for two bottles and his kids' candy, and Sakura's first transaction was over. As the family exited the store, she called out to them, "You guys drive safe!" and was met with a chorus of thank yous. The kids waved goodbye, and then all three of them were gone.

"So, how was it?" her manager asked as he leaned on the side of the counter opposite of her. "That was your first customer, wasn't it?"

"Yes," she replied. "They were nice." Her manager retreated to the back, and Sakura returned to her reading.

Cars came through regularly, but no one else came in to buy anything. Sakura got through three chapters before her peace was again disturbed—only this time it didn't even take a customer walking in to disrupt it.

It was in the middle of a lull in the plot that she heard the rumble of a vehicle distinctly separate from the quiet purrs of the car engines she'd been hearing all day. She looked up just as it cut off, and there was silence—and then the door swung open, letting in one of the scariest-looking men she'd ever seen in her life.

He must have been at least six foot three, his arms covered in blue-gray tattoos (there were even some on his cheekbones!), and he was wearing a white t-shirt and a leather vest that stretched snugly across his broad shoulders. There was a loud _clunk_ every time he took a step—his boots were dusty and looked as if he wore them often. His hair was dark and short; his face roughly angular and almost harsh. He looked like the kind of person who wouldn't swerve to miss animals on the road.

Sakura watched him warily from the corner of her eye as he walked slowly to the side of the store where the drinks were kept. Remembering her fear of an armed robber, she searched for a gun on him, but he wasn't wearing a holster, and his shirt was tucked into the waistband of his faded blue jeans, so he couldn't be hiding one. The only place left that she imagined could conceal a weapon, albeit a small one, was the inside of his boots, but even if there was a comically tiny handgun in there she was confident that he wouldn't be stupid enough to try and rob her with it. Then again, he was nearly twice her size…

Sakura remembered her manager's promise to handle a customer if she didn't want to, and her hand was already twitching toward that walkie-talkie just under the counter. But then she remembered how the frosty father of three hours ago had melted at her joke even after throwing an unpleasant attitude beforehand.

She pulled her hand away from the radio and joined it to the other, folding them both in front of her as she stood ready and waiting.

The man approached the register, soda in one hand and cell phone in the other, his gaze focused on the glowing screen. Sakura smiled despite that, determined to be polite, and said, "Hi there, find everything okay today?"

"Just fine, thanks," he said, his voice unsurprisingly a deep rumble. He set the bottle of Coke down on the counter. "And a packet of Newports, please." That he was a smoker, too, wasn't a surprise. In fact, the only thing that was surprising was his courtesy—she could count on one hand the number of times a customer had said _please_ to her, and exactly none of them had been leather-wearing bikers with tattoo-covered arms.

After Sakura cashed him out for the cigarettes and the soda, he pocketed one and palmed the other and turned to go, giving her a look at the arrangement of patches on the back of his vest: a large, dark red cloud surrounded by smaller patches, including a yellow compass with an emphasized south bearing, and another patch that simply read "est. 1994." It reminded her of the vests she'd seen in _Sons of Anarchy_. At least there weren't any reading "Men of Mayhem" or "Unholy Ones."

"Thanks," he said, looking back at her over his shoulder as he headed to the door.

"Oh, you're welcome!" she hastily replied, again surprised at his civility. "Have a nice day!"

The man grunted and left.

He didn't vacate the premises, though—Sakura could see him through the windows that wrapped around the front and sides of the store as he went to stand off a little ways left of the door, where he lit a cigarette and made a call on his phone. While he talked, Sakura got the chance to really look at him.

Not only was he tall, but muscular, too, with carved biceps and broad forearms. He lifted the Newport between his fingers to take a drag, his bicep growing rounder as his hand met his mouth. Sakura realized that she was staring and shook her head, redirecting her focus. His tattoos looked curiously like wedding henna—geometric designs that covered his medium-toned skin, beginning at his fingers and extending up into his shirtsleeves.

Despite his aggressive bearing, she concluded, he was actually okay-looking—certainly not oozing magnetism like her charismatic brother did, but he could qualify as attractive. There was just something about the set of his shoulders and the way his neck moved, and the quirking of the corners of his lips…

Suddenly he turned and looked at her, as if he could sense that she was staring at him, and caught her hopelessly off-guard. She hadn't looked him directly in the eyes before—they were dark and piercing, and far more intimidating than his clothes or his size. Those were eyes that didn't joke around. Those were eyes that recognized the scrutinization that Sakura had been putting him under. Her face grew hot, and she looked down timidly, hoping she hadn't just offended him.

She fiddled with the time-softened corners of her book, not daring to look up until she thought it was safe to. When she did, the man was no longer there. She was certain that he had already driven away when she heard the rip of a motorcycle engine—and there he was, driving across the tiny parking lot. He seemed to be going in slow motion as he directed his visored gaze toward the window, and Sakura could swear he was looking straight at her, before he accelerated sharply and disappeared from sight.

The rest of her day was unexciting.

**A/N: **Surprise, I'm not dead! This is a ship that's been growing on me for a long time. There will definitely be more chapters—at least two more. (Don't count on that. I'm procrastinating trash.) Try to guess the identity of Sakura's brother! I'll send you a preview of the next chapter if you get it right.


	2. Chapter 2

Sakura was sleeping on a cloud, a gloriously soft, warm cloud that was floating slowly across a calm sea. She had never felt more comfortable, more contented than this…but what was that noise?

Then she cracked an eye open, squinting at the bright light that was illuminating the pitch-black darkness of her bedroom. Her alarm was going off from its place on her bedside table. Aching from her long night working, she was tempted to press snooze and try to find that languid comfort she'd been rudely ripped away from. But she swung her feet off the bed anyway, hobbling to her window and pulling open her curtains, letting the late morning light stream in.

It had been a week since her first day at the gas station; the job hadn't gotten any more interesting. She'd finished her book and started on the sequel, handled customers' comments on her hair color, deterred weakly-flirting preteens, and tried not to glance excitedly at the door every time it opened hoping that a tall, tattooed figure would walk in wanting to buy cigarettes. The biker's appearance must have been a fluke, because she hadn't seen him since he'd walked out of the store.

She slid a plain cotton t-shirt over her head and pulled on a pair of faded shorts. The manager didn't care what she wore, and she'd thought about showing up in her night job clothes just to see if he would say something.

_I don't see how he couldn't, _she thought drolly.

As it was she went casual anyway, stopping only briefly to pull her short hair back into a small ponytail. She wasn't aiming to impress anyone. She said goodbye to her cat and locked the door behind her.

Her drive to Come and Go was uneventful, but when she arrived, a very different scene from the norm greeted her. The usually-empty lot was occupied by several motorcycles, the leather-clad owners of which standing off to the side smoking, talking, or doing something on their phones. They were all wearing vests with a dark red cloud on the back, and immediately Sakura wondered, as she drove around the store to park in the back, if _he_ was there, too. _He has to be…_

She came in through the back entrance, heart pounding in her chest, wondering why she cared so much if he was there or not—she'd only seen him once, and it wasn't like she had watched every day to see if he would show up again or anything. Really, she hadn't.

When she'd hurriedly put her nametag on and stowed her purse, she went into the front gripping her book at her side like it was a stress ball. And there he was, his tall, broad form sticking up over the chest-high shelves. He was exactly as she remembered him.

She hoped he might look up when she entered the store, but he was looking down at a box in his hands. Another man, shorter than him, was standing at his side. The man had long black hair and thick-rimmed glasses perched on the crown of his head. He looked tired.

"Sakura!" her manager exclaimed, looking relieved to see her there. The tall man looked up, and their eyes met, briefly, before she averted her gaze and went behind the counter.

"Hey," she replied in greeting. "What's up?"

"Oh, nothing at all!" he said with a forced laugh. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "How was your night?"

"It was okay, my boss let me off early." The manager knew that she worked two jobs, but she hadn't told him what her second one was. She had answered his question truthfully enough, though—it had been a really good night. She'd gotten a lot of tips, and after work she and her best friend Ino and a few other girls they worked with went out for a late-night snack. Ino knew all about the biker Sakura had encountered—she suddenly realized with a surge of apprehension that she was going to have to tell her that he'd reappeared, otherwise she would strangle her.

She took her place behind the register and her boss all but fled to the back room. It was then that the front door flew open, admitting two of the bikers she'd seen standing in the front. One was a man with shaggy black hair and tattoos of stitches across his face; the other had slicked back silver hair and a face that seemed to have a permanent smirk on it.

"What the fuck is taking the two of you so goddamn long?" the silver-haired man demanded loudly. Sakura suddenly had a jolt of recognition. She hurriedly undid her ponytail, praying fervently that the man with the silver hair didn't look back, and combed her hair forward with her fingers to hide more of her face. When she looked up, the tall biker, whose name apparently was Kisame, was giving her a curious expression.

Eventually they all came up to the counter and Kisame set down his stuff. This time it was a granola bar and a Dr. Pepper.

"_That's_ all you're getting?" Silver Hair squawked. "You spend fifteen fuckin' minutes in a goddamn middle of nowhere store with the stupidest name on the fucking planet and—hey, don't I know you, sweetheart?"

Sakura froze. All four men were staring at her. _Say something. SAY something. _"Oh, um, I'm sorry, I don't think so…" she mumbled, turning away quickly to add up Kisame's total on the register.

"Swear to god I—" he suddenly paused and crossed himself "—I swear I know you. I don't forget anyone, are you sure we haven't met?"

"Crossing yourself isn't going to do a damn thing once you've said it, Hidan," the man with the tattooed face drawled. "You might be the worst Catholic I've known."

"What do you know, fuckface, you've never stepped foot into a church in your life. Anyway, sweetheart, you gotta help me out, where do I know you from?"

"I—I don't recognize you…" she mumbled. "I'm sorry…"

"Leave the girl alone, Hidan," Kisame rumbled. "We'll be out in a sec."

The man with the stiches on his face grabbed Hidan by the collar of his vest and dragged him out of the store. Sakura breathed a sigh of relief.

"Sorry about that," the long-haired man said, giving her a gentle smile. "He's, ah, difficult to deal with."

"It's okay," she said. "Don't worry about it."

Kisame was studying her with a curious expression, but he said nothing besides a word of thanks when she handed him his receipt. The two men left, and Sakura exhaled a breath she hadn't noticed she'd been holding. A little disappointed that the encounter hadn't been with Kisame and him alone, she was about to sit in her chair to read when a loud cry came from outside the store. She looked up to see Hidan throw his hands in the air angrily, having apparently shouted in frustration, and Kisame came back into the store. Sakura's heart leapt.

"I forgot to ask, can I get a packet of Newports?" he asked her as he returned to the register.

"Sure!" she exclaimed, bending down to get them from the display.

"By the way," Kisame said, leaning an elbow on the counter and looking her straight in the eye as she came up, "you were lying to Hidan, weren't you? He says he doesn't forget a face but he's the most damn forgetful person I've ever met. Has he caused you any trouble?"

Sakura shook her head. "No, no trouble, I just…" she trailed off. She didn't feel like sharing what exactly the issue was. Her head was starting to pound.

"Mm." Kisame straightened, getting out his wallet. He paid again, and she gave him his cigarettes.

She thought that that was the end of it, but when he pocketed the Newports he said, "I can't guarantee that he won't come by again, but if he does I want you to let me know. He's harmless enough, but he's got a history of bothering people. If you don't want him here I'll make sure he doesn't come around." To her mortification, he pulled out a small notepad from a pocket inside his vest, wrote something in it, and ripped out the page, folding it up and sliding it onto the counter. "You have a nice day."

He turned and left, not even waiting to see if she picked up the paper. She did, eventually, and as she expected it was a phone number, with his full name, "Kisame Hoshigaki," written underneath. She shakily slid it into her front pocket as the cacophonous roar of several motorcycle engines blazed past the store, fading as it merged onto the highway. The sound gave her a strange feeling.

She didn't know how to feel when, five days after the entire ordeal, she hadn't had to use the number even once. She kept it with her at all times, using it for a bookmark, but she'd involuntarily memorized it anyway, having unfolded it during lulls in business (and there were many of those) and dragging her gaze around the curves and corners of each digit.

On the sixth day she walked into work thinking that the day would pass very much the same as the ones before. And for the entire day, it seemed that way, too—until at seven, when the sun was just starting to sink into the horizon, she heard an approaching rumble. She looked up eagerly, waiting to see a certain tall, tattooed man with a harsh face through the window, only to feel her heart drop when instead she saw Hidan approach the door. He had aviators on and a cigarette hanging from his mouth, lazy smirk in place.

Sakura tore the walkie-talkie from its charging port and hissed into it, "There's a customer I need you to take care of," before bolting for the back room, not even pausing to see if her manager was on his way to the front.

She dialed Kisame's number and waited impatiently for him to pick up, meanwhile eavesdropping on Hidan and her manager. He was asking for her. Finally the line connected right when her manager said he'd retrieve her from the back.

"This is Kisame."

"Oh, thank god! It's me—it's the clerk from the Come and Go. You gave me your number, you told me to call if that guy came here again, he's here, and—"

"I'll be there in five minutes."

She kept the phone pressed to her ear, and when her manager came into the back she covered the mouthpiece and whispered "Small family emergency, I can't hang up!" At which he nodded and returned to the front.

As promised, five minutes later the bell over the door dinged.

"Kisame! What are you doing here, man?" Hidan exclaimed. Sakura peeked out into the store—Hidan's back was to her, and she could see the patches on his vest. A scythe, a cross, an orange number three, and the same red cloud as Kisame.

"I've got an errand to run, so I need you to go back to Pain's and help finish up."

"What? Fuck no, why do I have to help them paint their own damn house? I'm busy anyway, this asshole is—"

"Keeping you from harassing his employee? Let it go, Hidan, the poor girl is terrified of you. Don't you know when to leave someone alone?" Kisame rumbled.

"What?! Why would she be scared of me, I haven't done anything to her!" Hidan exclaimed indignantly. Evidently he hadn't considered that she didn't want to talk to him. "Man, people will take one look at a guy and call him a thug, for God's—" he paused, and Sakura was pretty sure he crossed himself "—for fuck's sake."

Despite the situation, Sakura snorted at the fact that Hidan thought "for fuck's sake" was in any way less offensive than "for God's sake."

"And how do you know that's why I'm here, anyway?" he demanded. Sakura's heart leapt to her throat.

"That's the only reason you _would _be here. It's time for you to go, Hidan," Kisame said. "Don't intrude where you're not wanted." There was a finality in his tone that left no room for argument, and a tense silence followed his words.

"Who's gonna make me go, huh?" Hidan asked evenly. Sakura slapped her hand over her mouth. Were they going to fight? The silence stretched out until a bark of laugher cut through the tension. "All right man, I'll go. I can always come back."

The bell rang over the door, the rip of a motorcycle engine signaling his departure. Sakura didn't know if she should come out yet or not, until she heard Kisame call out.

"He's gone! You all right back there?"

Sakura emerged from the back, gripping her cell phone tightly as she walked toward the register and her savior. "I'm okay," she said as Kisame watched her approach, his eyes never leaving her as she came to stand in front of him. "I'm sorry, I would have handled him myself, I just—I can't—"

Kisame held up his hand. "It's no big deal. He's hard to manage, that one. He doesn't mean any harm—he's just an idiot."

It was the second time someone had said something along those lines to her. Sakura smiled ruefully, suddenly shy; she studied her shoes. "Well…thank you, anyway. I'm really, really grateful." She peeked up at him—Kisame had an easy smile on his face that somehow fit seem his harsh features, rather than seeming out of place. In fact, it made him seem rather genial. His sharp eyes were gleaming.

"Be seeing you," he said, and he left without another word.

"Sakura," came her manager's voice, finally reminding her of his presence behind the counter. "Sakura, I hate to do this, but if he's gonna come back looking for you…well, I'd rather he had no reason to. People like him scare the rest of the customers off, and corporate would shut us down if we don't meet our quota…"

She nodded, offering him a reassuring smile. "It's okay." She took off her nametag and handed it to him. "Thanks for having me. Sorry about…everything."

He nodded. "You be safe, okay?"

Sakura was standing by her car in the back when Kisame pulled around on his bike, easing to a slow stop beside her. She walked over to him as he pulled off his helmet, swallowing hard as the muscles in his neck shifted when he turned his head to look at her. She forcefully refocused her attention onto his face. He was surveying her with his sharp eyes, sizing her up; she flushed.

"Your name is Sakura, right?" he asked.

"Y-yes!" she exclaimed, surprised and strangely elated that he had remembered. "Sakura Haruno."

"Nice to officially meet you, Miss Haruno," he said, grinning. He offered her his tattooed hand. She took it—his hand was large and warm, his grip firm. She liked that. She liked _him_.

"Thank you for helping me," she said again, unable to think of anything else to say when he was looking straight at her like that.

"Don't thank me too much," he replied. "I'd like an explanation. After all I did just tell one of my close friends to hit the road for a virtual stranger. I deserve something in return, don't you think?"

Sakura bit her lip. On one hand, she really wanted to tell him that the entire issue with Hidan wasn't any of his business. On the other, he had just saved her from an even bigger issue with the very man in question. Finally, she said, "I guess it's only fair."

"Mm," he rumbled in acknowledgement. He waited, obviously expecting her to begin her explanation, but she didn't want to pour out all of her secrets behind the hole-in-the-wall gas station she had just left the employment of. "Can we go somewhere else?" she asked.

"Sure," Kisame replied. "I know just the place, too—you mind following behind me?"

Sakura shook her head. "No!"

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **;)


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